Tag: #Wasteful #Obama

The compressed natural gas station in Afghanistan that cost $43 million. (U.S. government)

John Sopko’s team of investigators has uncovered all kinds of wasteful spending in Afghanistan through its work as a U.S. government watchdog. Now the group has uncovered a $43 million gas station, which Sopko calls “gratuitous and extreme”—and possibly criminal.

In a scathing report, Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, wrote that a similar compressed natural gas station in Pakistan cost $500,000, or about $306,000 at current exchange rates, meaning the Afghanistan station cost 140 times as much.

He wrote that the Pentagon’s program had “several troubling aspects,” including $30 million in overhead costs, and the lack of a feasibility study before the project began.

Sopko said that that the Pentagon essentially shut down when pressed about the program, saying: “One of the most troubling aspects of this project is that the Department of Defense claims that it is unable to provide and explanation for the high cost of the project or to answer any other questions concerning its planning, implementation or outcome.”

The department that was in charge of it, the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations, has closed and so the Pentagon said it couldn’t comment on its activities, Sopko’s letter said.

He wrote that he found it “both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago.”